July 9, 2012

Salt

I wasn't the only thing running hot this week, blew out the start capacitor, back up and running in an hour.

I've been eating a ton of salt lately. This last couple weeks with hot temperatures and some pretty brutal workouts I have been sweating a ton and drinking a ton while spending lots of time in the sun. While it seems like I am getting use to the heat, I have been drinking so much water adding salt to everything helps keep the balance. One day last week when it was upper 90s I did a 3hr ride with 3x20s and by the time I got home I was almost 7lbs lighter than my normal waking weight of 148ish. On top of that, I drank 6 -16oz bottles of water during the ride so that is a massive amount of water loss. I've been feeling good on the bike though so I'm being a little careful of overdoing it and running the body down to empty. These last weeks and the ones coming up are pretty important for the rest of the season and some of the bigger races in August so I am trying to maintain a high level of training despite the heat which I'm sure adds a significant amount of training stress to each ride. I do have my routes dialed right now with water stops, we have a bunch of hiking and site-seeing spots out in the Kettle Moraine area where I ride that have a few water wells I stop and fill up at. It is great living in WI where you can still get ice-cold well water in the middle of July when it's 100 degrees out, one of the great things about WI that I do appreciate. So, I have been doign my intervals, stopping and cooling off with ice water, refilling bottles, then back out to finish the ride and hit the other water spot I know on the way back into Plymouth.

the ultimate cross workout

Sam Schultz and Me at Pan American Championships Ecuador 2004

It was interesting to see some of what they are saying today about Sam Schultz winning mtn bike Championships. I did a lot of racing with Sam back in 2005-2007 when I was doing a lot of the national level mtn bike racing. We roomed together in Ecuador at Pan American Championships for a week so I spent a fair amount of time with him although he was younger so I graduated to elite while he still raced U23 one or two more years. It is great he has finally made his way to the top of the sport, he's been keeping at it and finally beat out those 3-4 guys that have been winning the races for the last 10 year. In my opinion Sam is probably one of the last to benefit from a strong mtn program in the early 2000s. He was the last of the US Devo team and just squeaked into the Gary Fischer program as all those big teams downsized mostly because he was the best of all the young guys that were out there. I can't think of anyone who has joined a big program or scored a pro team contract since Sam and it's taken about 5 years now for him to come to the front of the sport since then. I guess what I am saying is, if anyone was goign to take down one of those guys it was going to be him because he has had the support and talent to do it year after year. If you think about it, until Sam won this race, it has bascially been the same 3-5 US names at the top of American mtn biking since early 2000 - JHK, Craig, Bishop,Wells, and Trebon. It will be interesting the next few years to see how these programs go when these guys retire - right now there is not much support for young guys to grow in the sport to get better but it's great Sam has utilized his opportunity and progressed to this level because there haven't been many since him to have that chance. Hopefully that changes.

Pan American Championships Banos, Ecuador, roomed with Sam Schultz for a bunch of days - he was fast then too